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fandomweekly2022-03-01 01:52 pm
coffinliqueur) wrote in fandomweekly2022-03-01 01:52 pm
Entry tags:
[#127] The Siblings Sub-Liminal (Resident Evil)
Theme Prompt: #127 - For Science!
Title: The Siblings Sub-Liminal
Fandom: Resident Evil
Rating/Warnings: T - Language, Non-Graphic Canon-Typical Violence
Word Count: 999
Summary: Zoe's always done her best to deal with her brother fairly; understand what they both need and what they're gonna get.
"Give me one good reason why I should let you buy a cart full of fireworks?"
"You ain't Mama, for one - 'n I think that's a pretty good one!" Lucas twisted Zoe a look somewhere between a playfighting grin and an all-out grimace as he swatted the hand which held him by the hood. The shopping cart, having now been pushed a good thirty feet past the corral which he'd been directed to bring it to, wobbled off course in his grip.
Zoe met the challenge with a mildly spiteful brand of joy held in a smirk, of her own. She yanked him towards her, making him flinch and careen on one leg. "No," she said, "but I am the one who's gonna have to tell 'er what you're gettin' yourself up to when she realizes you've gone off, which she's gonna. Where'd you get the money, anyway?"
"I didn't steal it," Lucas said, tone dangerously rarified, "if that's what you're thinkin'!"
"I wasn't accusin' you of nothing."
"Won me a li'l coding contest online!" Lucas met her eyes with the lids of his own comfortably lowered, his self-contentment in refuting the accusation which she'd just said she had not made apparent in spades.
"And whaddyou need 'em for?"
"What, the cash?!"
"Nuh-uh, Lucas. The fireworks?"
"Science project?" Lucas sneered; shrugged with a toss of his head. "Oughta be good enough for you! 'S sure gonna be good enough for Mama! What do I ever need extra shit for?"
"Point, I suppose."
She bit her tongue and winced at a self-inflicted mental swat on the head at given Lucas a concession as soon as she'd processed that she had, and one moment later, he yanked himself out of her grip like a dog yanking its leash free, the cart clattering over old blacktop as it picked up momentum towards the shack at the edge of the strip center.
Lucas stuck his tongue out at her. Flipped her off. Finally, waved. "Let it be my business, won't you, for the love of god?" His grin had come back, sans any complication, despite the harsh edge to his voice.
"I would," Zoe said, calling halfheartedly through one hand cupped around her mouth, "but you are messin' with fireworks! I'm reckoning that's gonna turn into the rest of our business soon enough!"
"You ever hear that sayin' about assumptions, Zo'?" he hollered back at her, before he leaned his weight into the cart.
Made full tilt for that shack.
Left Zoe standing back, crossing her arms, planting her weight. Scoffing out through her nose.
Watching his back with, nonetheless, an unchanged face.
Lucas will be Lucas, she'd long since learned - any humor to be found in his shenanigans often came with consequences, on one hand; on the other, she hadn't the capacity to feel others' degree of exasperation or confusion in the face of it, as he was her brother and such things were a part of her life - and she knew him well enough to know how to find her own humor around anything that he'd done; low-consequence ways to make him pay, humbly, for any trouble that he might drag her into.
She imagined what'd happen next already. Mama wouldn't have the heart to tell 'im off of buying something with his own buck, and ask that he please not set anything off, whatever his project of the week was. Something'd blow up. He'd catch flack from Daddy, and be down by whatever of his stash he hadn't already used. She'd tell him she tried to tell him so, when he got to grumping about the unavoidability of acknowledging that they lived under their parents' roof.
She would let it be his business, at this point. She'd let him have his fireworks, as far as he could get with 'em, and eventually, she'd have her dry punchline.
She'd just have to wait for the boom.
She did, after the first step of her prediction came true, Mama massaging her temples as Lucas loaded colored explosives into the trunk alongside her shopping bags. After they headed inside from the garage, and Daddy cut off a question that he'd been just about to ask before telling Luke, thickly, "What your mother said, son," with a hanging and shaking head.
It never came, alas.
She'd smell gunpowder when she stood under the trapdoor to the attic to call him down from his workshop to supper, for weeks to come, huffing inside at the expectation that one of these nights, Mom and Dad'd be calling the carpenters out from town to patch a hell of a hole in the roof; but that night never came, either.
It was, however, what it was. Her brother worked in mysterious ways, indeed, and being denied "payoff" was, in fact, more of a relief and victory than not, letting yet another episode of oddity fade into the normalcy of what their lives'd always been. Quiet was preferable to drama.
So she let it slide.
Let it slide for weeks more, months, years without the roof blown open, even as normalcy rotted away; as no one was more painfully aware that they were under their parents' roof than her, avoiding their eyes gone distant yet so-sharp that they could pin you to the spot like a needle through a moth, and their stalking footsteps and punishments for the slightest sounds.
She'd always had other fish to fry than Lucas's eccentricities. Someone had had to treat the fella as everyday, no worse and no smarter and no more interesting than anybody. Had to let a guy live.
And live, he did, in those rotted-out days.
In his attic workshop, or the barn, drawing sketches of weaponry and loading gunpowder into shells - caging the smallest of the Molded he could find up in the barn and hooting, eyes on fire, as his turrets blasted and grenades enflamed, setting off his fireworks at last, in salute to his freedom coming.
His unstoppability.
Title: The Siblings Sub-Liminal
Fandom: Resident Evil
Rating/Warnings: T - Language, Non-Graphic Canon-Typical Violence
Word Count: 999
Summary: Zoe's always done her best to deal with her brother fairly; understand what they both need and what they're gonna get.
"Give me one good reason why I should let you buy a cart full of fireworks?"
"You ain't Mama, for one - 'n I think that's a pretty good one!" Lucas twisted Zoe a look somewhere between a playfighting grin and an all-out grimace as he swatted the hand which held him by the hood. The shopping cart, having now been pushed a good thirty feet past the corral which he'd been directed to bring it to, wobbled off course in his grip.
Zoe met the challenge with a mildly spiteful brand of joy held in a smirk, of her own. She yanked him towards her, making him flinch and careen on one leg. "No," she said, "but I am the one who's gonna have to tell 'er what you're gettin' yourself up to when she realizes you've gone off, which she's gonna. Where'd you get the money, anyway?"
"I didn't steal it," Lucas said, tone dangerously rarified, "if that's what you're thinkin'!"
"I wasn't accusin' you of nothing."
"Won me a li'l coding contest online!" Lucas met her eyes with the lids of his own comfortably lowered, his self-contentment in refuting the accusation which she'd just said she had not made apparent in spades.
"And whaddyou need 'em for?"
"What, the cash?!"
"Nuh-uh, Lucas. The fireworks?"
"Science project?" Lucas sneered; shrugged with a toss of his head. "Oughta be good enough for you! 'S sure gonna be good enough for Mama! What do I ever need extra shit for?"
"Point, I suppose."
She bit her tongue and winced at a self-inflicted mental swat on the head at given Lucas a concession as soon as she'd processed that she had, and one moment later, he yanked himself out of her grip like a dog yanking its leash free, the cart clattering over old blacktop as it picked up momentum towards the shack at the edge of the strip center.
Lucas stuck his tongue out at her. Flipped her off. Finally, waved. "Let it be my business, won't you, for the love of god?" His grin had come back, sans any complication, despite the harsh edge to his voice.
"I would," Zoe said, calling halfheartedly through one hand cupped around her mouth, "but you are messin' with fireworks! I'm reckoning that's gonna turn into the rest of our business soon enough!"
"You ever hear that sayin' about assumptions, Zo'?" he hollered back at her, before he leaned his weight into the cart.
Made full tilt for that shack.
Left Zoe standing back, crossing her arms, planting her weight. Scoffing out through her nose.
Watching his back with, nonetheless, an unchanged face.
Lucas will be Lucas, she'd long since learned - any humor to be found in his shenanigans often came with consequences, on one hand; on the other, she hadn't the capacity to feel others' degree of exasperation or confusion in the face of it, as he was her brother and such things were a part of her life - and she knew him well enough to know how to find her own humor around anything that he'd done; low-consequence ways to make him pay, humbly, for any trouble that he might drag her into.
She imagined what'd happen next already. Mama wouldn't have the heart to tell 'im off of buying something with his own buck, and ask that he please not set anything off, whatever his project of the week was. Something'd blow up. He'd catch flack from Daddy, and be down by whatever of his stash he hadn't already used. She'd tell him she tried to tell him so, when he got to grumping about the unavoidability of acknowledging that they lived under their parents' roof.
She would let it be his business, at this point. She'd let him have his fireworks, as far as he could get with 'em, and eventually, she'd have her dry punchline.
She'd just have to wait for the boom.
She did, after the first step of her prediction came true, Mama massaging her temples as Lucas loaded colored explosives into the trunk alongside her shopping bags. After they headed inside from the garage, and Daddy cut off a question that he'd been just about to ask before telling Luke, thickly, "What your mother said, son," with a hanging and shaking head.
It never came, alas.
She'd smell gunpowder when she stood under the trapdoor to the attic to call him down from his workshop to supper, for weeks to come, huffing inside at the expectation that one of these nights, Mom and Dad'd be calling the carpenters out from town to patch a hell of a hole in the roof; but that night never came, either.
It was, however, what it was. Her brother worked in mysterious ways, indeed, and being denied "payoff" was, in fact, more of a relief and victory than not, letting yet another episode of oddity fade into the normalcy of what their lives'd always been. Quiet was preferable to drama.
So she let it slide.
Let it slide for weeks more, months, years without the roof blown open, even as normalcy rotted away; as no one was more painfully aware that they were under their parents' roof than her, avoiding their eyes gone distant yet so-sharp that they could pin you to the spot like a needle through a moth, and their stalking footsteps and punishments for the slightest sounds.
She'd always had other fish to fry than Lucas's eccentricities. Someone had had to treat the fella as everyday, no worse and no smarter and no more interesting than anybody. Had to let a guy live.
And live, he did, in those rotted-out days.
In his attic workshop, or the barn, drawing sketches of weaponry and loading gunpowder into shells - caging the smallest of the Molded he could find up in the barn and hooting, eyes on fire, as his turrets blasted and grenades enflamed, setting off his fireworks at last, in salute to his freedom coming.
His unstoppability.